Porn downloaded at the Vatican, US website claims

Pornographic websites featuring sadomasochism, transsexuals and bondage have
been downloaded within the Vatican, it has been claimed.

The inestigation came up with some rather surprising results, which emerged from an IP address within the Vatican's stone wallsPhoto: ALAMY

By Nick Squires, Rome

3:41PM BST 09 Apr 2013

Somebody within the tiny city state has a taste for X-rated films and websites featuring adult entertainment stars such as Tiffany Starr, who promises "some of the hottest transsexual porn" on the internet.

The penchant for porn within the Holy See was discovered by Torrent Freak, an American website that analyses file sharing.

The website initially set out to see if anyone in the Vatican was illegally downloading films and music for free in breach of copyright laws.

But it came up with some rather surprising results, which emerged from an IP address within the Vatican's stone walls.

It was not clear who downloaded the porn. The Vatican has a permanent population of just 800 people, among them priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope, but several thousand more prelates and officials work there on a regular basis, crossing an all-but invisible border with Rome.

"Over in the Vatican, pirates are having the time of their lives downloading some quite eye-watering media. We spotted some downloads to get pulses racing. It seems that while Vatican dwellers aren't all that interested in Hollywood movies, they do enjoy adult-related celluloid," the writers of TorrentFreak said.

The downloads included German-language bondage material as well as performances by Lea Lexis, a Romanian porn star, whose credits include films called Voracious and Sexual Gymnastics.

"In the interests of science we researched each of the titles and discovered that downloaders in the Vatican have one or two unusual 'niche' interests," TorrentFreak said.

"There isn't a commandment that covers these films directly, but some might argue there should be."

A Vatican insider, who asked not to be named, told The Daily Telegraph: "This is not China – we don't try to censure what people download or choose to look at on the web. It's very hard to control."

The downloads were not all about sex and sadomasochism – there were also mainstream films such as the romantic comedy Love Actually, starring Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson and Keira Knightley, as well as American television series such as The Neighbours and Chicago Fire.